The following is an opinion by Todd C. Ream on the legacy of Father Theodore Hesburgh, CSC, published in August 29, 2021, in The Journal Gazette.
Intelligent by Design
Public’s disdain of intellectuals is to our detriment
Our public square is as uninformed as it is toxic. We can laugh about it or shout about it, but unless something gives, all of us will lose.
At one time, public intellectuals – persons who exert a large influence in the contemporary society through their thought, writing, or speaking – provided leaven for the public square. Those who followed in the wake of Edmund Burke, Max Weber and Reinhold Niebuhr largely abandoned the public square in favor of jargon-laden scholarship and shrill expressions of self-righteousness. Too many academic journals and Twitter feeds, respectively, provide the evidence.
The populist resistance to expertise, while regrettable, at times is understandable.
But recent history illustrates the critical role public intellectuals play in the cultivation of an informed and charitable public square. In the mid-to-late 20th century, Theodore Martin Hesburgh was the nation’s most widely recognized Catholic priest and university president. Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1917, Hesburgh found himself unceremoniously appointed Notre Dame’s president in 1952 – an office he held for 35 years.
Prior to Hesburgh’s tenure, football overshadowed any academic accomplishments on the South Bend campus. Early in his presidency, Hesburgh often opened news conferences by reminding journalists he would answer questions about academic matters – period. Questions concerning football were punted to the athletic staff.
The meteoric rise of Notre Dame’s academic reputation during Hesburgh’s tenure gave the media something besides football to report on.
For example, “Notre Dame doubled its enrollment, added 40 buildings, grew its endowment from $9 million to $350 million, increased student aid from $20,000 to $40 million, and upped the average faculty salary from $5,400 to $50,800.” Perhaps the signal achievement represented by those numbers is Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library (aka “Touchdown Jesus”), which, when constructed, was the largest university library in the world.
Hesburgh’s efforts were not limited to Notre Dame. While president, he accepted appointments (to name but a few) from the White House to serve on the National Science Board, the Civil Rights Commission, the Clemency Board and the Select Commission on Immigrant and Refugee Policy; and from the Vatican to serve as its delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Until Hesburgh’s death in 2015, launching programs such as Andean Health and Development also consumed his attention.
In recognition of his efforts, Hesburgh received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson, the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Bill Clinton, a record-setting 150 honorary doctorates, and was one of two individuals (John F. Kennedy being the other) the U.S. Postal Service placed on first-class stamps in 2017.
Perhaps more instructive for our current moment is not what Hesburgh contributed to the public square but why and how he looked beyond his chapel or campus to a wider realm. Regardless of how he was called to serve, Hesburgh maintained that “the most fundamental thing I do is be a priest.”
Hesburgh’s understanding of his identity was rooted in his belief in the sacred or sacramental character of life and the ways all members of Christ’s body were called to use their diverse gifts and talents.
Hesburgh did so as a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross and a university president who was given considerable intellectual gifts (and reportedly required as few as four hours of sleep a night). As far back as his dissertation and first book, “The Theology of Catholic Action” (1946), Hesburgh contended, perhaps in anticipation of Vatican II, that clergy and laity alike were called to do God’s work – part of what he sought to offer by example to Notre Dame’s students and faculty.
How Hesburgh served, however, also matters.
Hesburgh realized the theological nature of complex social questions such as civil rights and immigration reform even as he understood the insufficiency of the language he was trained to employ as a theologian.
As a masterful public intellectual, Hesburgh could think through the theological and secular, even political, dimensions of those questions.
He then worked to draw upon the depths of his learned language in ways the public could understand.
Hesburgh also realized that his public roles often called him to serve with people with whom he firmly disagreed.
Regardless, charitably working together was critical to finding solutions.
For example, when serving on the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hesburgh labored to befriend Vasily Emelyanov, at the time a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union. Hesburgh’s rationale for doing so was that he believed he “could do a better job as a delegate if [he] could establish a personal relationship with at least one of the Russians at the conference.”
The range and complexity of the challenges populating the public square demand the expertise public intellectuals are poised to offer.
As Hesburgh’s legacy demonstrates, both the why and how of contributions prove critical.
Jargon-laden journal articles do not suffice; self-righteous tweets exacerbate the challenges. The health of the public square may hang in the balance.
Todd C. Ream serves on the faculty at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana; as a fellow with the Lumen Research Institute, and as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review. He is the author of “Hesburgh of Notre Dame: The Church’s Public Intellectual” and editor of “Hesburgh of Notre Dame: An Introduction to His Life and Work.”